OCR Text |
Show W AS "SUFFER" HELPS SOLDIERS Ji we stay in the other night and dropped four bombs. One hit on the house next the one the 'chief was sleeping in, tho rest a few hundred feet from our tents. No one was hurt. We called it the luck of Section Seven. Strange to say, the name of the street all the bombs fell' on is 'rue de la Bombe.' "I had an interesting experience a few days ago, in fact, at the time, it was too interesting. If I remember rightly I closed by last letter up In order to get a little sleep while I had the chance. Well, I hadn't been asleep more than an hour when I was awakened awak-ened by the noise of 'arrivees' not shells, but shrapnel. There was a battery not far from us and the Bodies were trying to silence it by making the gunners take to cover; hence, the shrapnel. I might remark that the entrance en-trance to our dugout having once been German now laced the wrong way said entrance being covered by a blanket. Each shot kept coming nearer, near-er, and you can't imagine a weirdei sound than the whine of bursting shrapnel. Burst at the Door. "Pretty soon it came so near that you could hear pieces hitting the top of the dugout. The last one burst the nearest ri;-ht in front of the door. Zowie! ing! patter, hit, bang! They ripped through that blanket like ' a clown going through a paper ring at a circus. I held my breath and lay still, Fortunately, none of us got hit, but in the morning we picked pieces out of all the walls. The blanket resembled a huge piece of Swiss cheese. The gunners came down in the morning to look us over, and told us the Bodies hadn't succeeded in driving them from their guns for a moment. We all agreed with the brancardier, who remarked, re-marked, 'Sale Boche.' "The same weather continues. Rain, hail, snow and laud inches deep, Think of the poor wounded in it aU, But we do help them. With love to all "Near Soissons. NORMAN." No Doubt About Poison Gas When Tabby Comes Hurrying Hur-rying Back. REAL WAR 000 WEARS MASK Norman Lee, American Ambulance Hero, Writes Interesting Letters of Life at the Front Luck of Section Seven. New York. Eliot Norton of New York city has received a letter from an American volunteer in France, Norman Nor-man Lee, eighteen years old, son of a newspaper man, who has been driving an American Red Cross ambulance for the last nine months, and who has received re-ceived the Croix de Guerre. The letter let-ter follows: "It's 2 a. m. I have just returned from a trip and It's a good time to write. While I attempt this two men are busily engaged in piling up trench torpedoes just outside of the 'dugout.' I call it a dugout in reality it's only a cellar but it serves its purpose keeps the 'eclats' from hitting you of course, a direct hit would be a different differ-ent thing. The Bodies dropped a few gas shells over about midnight. Have you ever heard a rattlesnake? Well, a gas shell has the same effect. No one has to tell you what it is, you know. It just goes 'put' and lets out a greenish vapor. That's enough-down enough-down in the dugout put on your masks and wait until the Bodies are finished. But it's a ghastly scene, one caudle burning, and every one sitting around with masks on the cat hugs the fire while James, the medicine dog, has his mask on, too it's a special spe-cial one and he knows enough not to paw it off. He's a real war dog. Official "Sniffer" Appointed. "During these sessions there is always al-ways an official 'sniffer' appointed, who has to lake off his mask, every once in a while, go to the door and see if the stuff is still around. The other day we were in doubt, so we threw the cat out. She -.ame back so quickly that no one had any doubt that it still was there. Oh ! it bothers me, the gas more than the shells. It's a pretty rotten way to make war. "A Boche avion came over the town |